A mad scientist gazes into a vial of blue liquid. "This substance is still liquid at minus 40 degrees," he tells his assistant, Boris. Boris replies, "Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?"
The scientist looks at Boris with his dark eyes and says, "It doesn't matter." Why does the scientist say that?

Comments

Missie you missed the point (unless thats sarcasm I'm missing! If it is sorry for the explaination!) Its the same temperature and nothing to do with the liquid. You could say water is solid at -40 degrees on either scale
The way you convert between the two is Temperature celcius is =(5/9)*(Temp Farenheit-32) so if you put in -40, the answer is -40. I hope this helps!

Common ether is still liquid at that range. It freezes at -116.3 degrees Celsius, under normal conditions. (What you know as 'ether' is really diethyl ether. Ether is actually a classification of hydrocarbons)

It's more trivia than puzzle, but it's still a very interesting piece of information.

Dina, if you don't think that 40 degrees below zero is the same on both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scale, use one of those handy online converters and see for yourself. And next time you doubt what someone else has already shown true, remember it is better to be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Actually I think that this puzzle (trivia?) is probably somewhat easier for non-Americans. Those of us who use Celcius daily (but who used F in a by-gone era) are probably aware of this type of comparison, moreso than Americans who still use the (obsolete?)Farenheit measurement.

some comments posted are for the month of june 02 and some for july 02 ?? i am a regular subscriber to the braingle teasers and just received the teaser today...18.07.02 !!!! this is more of a mystery to me.

when i first read the teaser i was thinking windshield wipper fluid like that george dude...but how does -40 degrees C and -40 degrees F equal the same when 40 degrees c and 40 degrees F dont? and i am stumped when ppl give me math to do so does any body care to explain?

I have an even easier way to think about it...5 degrees on the Celsius scale equals 9 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. Think about the temp. at which water freezes on each scale: 32 degrees F and 0 degrees C. Now take each of them down to -40 degrees. For each, it takes 8 steps of 5 for Celsius and 8 steps of 9 for Fahrenheit to reach -40. The two scales just happen to coincide at that temperature.

Everybody seems to think that Americans can't use the metric system. Well we can. It might be do to the age of the person. Some older people refuse to learn the metric system and some people don't have enough brains to figure out that the two scales coincide at -40 degrees. The metric system is taught at our schools here. I'm an engineer and throughout my college experience, all we used was SI units.

This is the only teaser I've had this week to which that I immediately knew the answer. Because -- my husband was caribou hunting in Canada and the temperature was below -40 C. He informed me that -40C and -40F were the same. (This is also my first week subscribed to Braingle).